I use it to stay in touch with my sister in New York, my cousin and Texas, and my mom and Grandma.

What about e-mail? Well, I know that my sister was sick over the weekend and her husband went out in the snow to get her soup. I know that they bought some little snow-slippers for her dog. I know that my cousin started his new job on Thursday and was very excited..

None of those are things they would have e-mailed me. In fact, getting all that by mail would be a bit spam-ish, to be honest.

But I'm glad that I have a place to check in on them and see how things are going. Likewise, they have a place to check in on photos of my daughter and see what she's doing every day. I'm certainly not going to e-mail them photos of Samantha every single day, but if the want to see some on any given day, they can.

It's a good "check if you want to but ignore if you don't want to" kind of system. E-mail is very in-your-face and demands an answer. Twitter is more passive. It's more like "in case you want to know" rather than "here! respond to me!" like e-mail is.

As I have most everyone I know on facebook already, and among them people who use twitter as well, but only to double-post, I've ended up using it solely to get entertainment news & other fun shit. So far I'm following Axecop (for release dates of each issue of this brilliant webcomic), shitmydadsays, stephenathome (Colbert, usually expanding on the previous episode's jokes), and sergegraystone. I don't feel like there's enough there to motivate me to keep visiting the site though.. Anyone have suggestions along the same vein? Or should I just figure out a way to fold these couple accounts into my RSS feed?

I have an account, but that was just to follow Conan around. Now that the big stuff is over, I just let the account languish. I figure if I get any kind of texting phone in the future, that may be a good use for it.

It's a great way to keep up with what's going on in the world. I'm following a ton of people around Ottawa, so it makes it easy to keep up on local news and events. I also find it a better way to interact with friends than Facebook; there tends to be a lot of conversations that will flare up and involve multiple people, moreso than I find occurs on FB.

If you travel a lot and have a big network of people from everywhere, it's a great way to connect with friends and get local information. For example, I went to Chicago last weekend, and was able to get together with a friend whom I didn't have their cell phone number for. I just said "Hey I'm in Chicago" and suddenly 3 or 4 friends from the chi area hit me up.

But even if you don't travel much, it's still good to follow event promoters in your city. They always tweet about specials and info about events like concerts and shows...

One is to get my paintings and soaps out to a wider audience, though I keep the spam pretty light. A new painting or various other creation once a week at most.

The other half is to connect with people. You have to put a bit of work upfront and give it about a month but before too long you're connecting with people who share your same interests, keeping up on the very cutting news, and getting a slight thrill when some celeb or other person you admire replying or retweeting you.

I'm actually going to be meeting some twitter friends I just made this next weekend and I'm really excited.

One is to get my paintings and soaps out to a wider audience, though I keep the spam pretty light. A new painting or various other creation once a week at most.

The other half is to connect with people. You have to put a bit of work upfront and give it about a month but before too long you're connecting with people who share your same interests, keeping up on the very cutting news, and getting a slight thrill when some celeb or other person you admire replying or retweeting you.

I'm actually going to be meeting some twitter friends I just made this next weekend and I'm really excited.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it can be a good way to make friends, for sure. I'm probably having a board game night on Monday with a few people I know predominantly through Twitter.

I think a lot of people simply don't understand how most people actually use Twitter. We're not just randomly letting the world know what we're having for dinner (though if I cook something good, I will engage in food porn occasionally), but rather we're making connections and having conversations. That's what it's about, in a nutshell. It's really a remarkable tool.

One is to get my paintings and soaps out to a wider audience, though I keep the spam pretty light. A new painting or various other creation once a week at most.

The other half is to connect with people. You have to put a bit of work upfront and give it about a month but before too long you're connecting with people who share your same interests, keeping up on the very cutting news, and getting a slight thrill when some celeb or other person you admire replying or retweeting you.

I'm actually going to be meeting some twitter friends I just made this next weekend and I'm really excited.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it can be a good way to make friends, for sure. I'm probably having a board game night on Monday with a few people I know predominantly through Twitter.

I think a lot of people simply don't understand how most people actually use Twitter. We're not just randomly letting the world know what we're having for dinner (though if I cook something good, I will engage in food porn occasionally), but rather we're making connections and having conversations. That's what it's about, in a nutshell. It's really a remarkable tool.

Click to expand...

I've just stopped trying to explain it to anyone who isn't going to give it a month.

I mostly use it to follow celebrities (I follow Shatner, Nimoy, Ryan Seacrest, Ellen DeGeneres and a few others) and keep in touch with one friend who doesn't Facebook, plus some U.S. military brass and the FDA (for recalls). Strange thing: I do not follow Spencer Pratt or Heidi Montag, but they both follow me. Maybe they're both trying to remember what a real human woman looks like...

One is to get my paintings and soaps out to a wider audience, though I keep the spam pretty light. A new painting or various other creation once a week at most.

The other half is to connect with people. You have to put a bit of work upfront and give it about a month but before too long you're connecting with people who share your same interests, keeping up on the very cutting news, and getting a slight thrill when some celeb or other person you admire replying or retweeting you.

I'm actually going to be meeting some twitter friends I just made this next weekend and I'm really excited.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it can be a good way to make friends, for sure. I'm probably having a board game night on Monday with a few people I know predominantly through Twitter.

I think a lot of people simply don't understand how most people actually use Twitter. We're not just randomly letting the world know what we're having for dinner (though if I cook something good, I will engage in food porn occasionally), but rather we're making connections and having conversations. That's what it's about, in a nutshell. It's really a remarkable tool.

Click to expand...

I've just stopped trying to explain it to anyone who isn't going to give it a month.

Click to expand...

That's probably a good call. I just get sick of people going "But it's so pointless, hur hur!" and then get drawn into silly debates.

Yeah, your approach is almost definitely better.

What's your name on Twitter, btw? I always like adding more BBS folks.

Never used twitter and probably never will - I just don't see any use for it.

Click to expand...

you know i only kinda played with it until the flood happend..
and well twitter has played a big part in saving people and especially in the rebuilding effort/

during the tennessee floods even if you called 911 and the rescue people got there they might not have one of their boats since they were at one of dozens of other places flooding.
both twiter and the local media by alerting volunteers were people needed help helped to save people.

twitter now plays a big part in rebuilding the areas effected by the flood.

it is one of the primary ways hands on nashville using to let people know that help is needed each day.

all kinds of needed information gets tweeted about.

plus it is fun using it for more mundane fun stuff like keeping up with your fav sports teams, restaurants ect..

i also like twitter because once you set it up on a computer you can get tweets through texts on your phone.
you dont have an expensive smart phone to use it.

I've been kind of neglecting my twitter lately. I haven't had a lot to say, I guess.

Click to expand...

I feel the same. There was a time when I used it a lot, now I can weeks without using it. It would different if there was an Australian number I could text, instead of an international number (well last time I checked)